Monday, March 08, 2010

University South Alabama Archives

The University of South Alabama Archives' collection focus is on the photographic history, and social, cultural, legal, political, and architectural heritage of Mobile, Alabama, the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay, and the University of South Alabama. With 1,000,000 negatives in its possession, it has grown to have one of the largest photographic collections in the region. It is also strong in its coverage of the civil rights', political', environmental', and women's history of the area.

Carol Ellis
Archivist
University of South Alabama Archives
USA Springhill Avenue
Room 0722
Mobile AL 36688
ph: 251-434-3800
fx: 251-434-3622
cellis@jaguar1.usouthal.edu
visit our online digital image collection at http://www.alabamamosaic.org/collections.php

Monday, March 08, 2010

Just Desserts Feminist Broadside


Celebrate the 100th anniversary of Woman Suffrage in Washington State (and of course, the history of Jello salad) with this delightful and historically researched print from Anagram Press.

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

The most recent issue (Fall 2009) of Microform & Imaging Review includes 8 articles and 4 reviews on the theme of "women's history digital collections."

De Gruyter's Reference Global site (http://www.reference-global.com/toc/mfir/current) offers full text access to subscribing institutions, and "abstracts" (first page) access to non-subscribers. Many libraries subscribe to the print edition, and there is always the interlibrary loan option.

The digitization projects that are showcased in this theme issue are improving access to primary sources that document women’s lives in places as diverse as Italy, Iran, and Muncie (“Middletown”), Indiana. Other collections focus on African American women at the University of Iowa, an underappreciated French American author, and the pioneering efforts of women in government and law.

Here's a list of the articles with brief annotations, along with links to the collections that are highlighted. The list also includes links to the full text of articles 2 and 7 (for this week only).

1. Women's History Collections: Digitization, Access, and the Future of Collaboration
by Ken Middleton- Provides a brief introduction to the key themes of the issue.


2. The Middletown Women's History Collection. A Case Study in Building a Digital Collection of Women's History Resources by Amanda A. Hurford and Maren L. Read- An excellent case study from the perspective of an archivist and a digital projects librarian.
Link to Middletown Women's History Collection
http://libx.bsu.edu/cdm4/collection.php?CISOROOT=/MidWmnHis
Link to full text of the article:
http://www.reference-global.com/stoken/default+domain/Ptc4ADasvvEytRcD4xnb/abs/10.1515/mfir.2009.017

3. Women's Worlds in Qajar Iran. A Digital Archive and Website Project of the History Department and Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Harvard University; and the Harvard College Library by Afsaneh Najmabadi- This project is bringing together widely dispersed primary sources, many of which remain in private family collections.
Link to grant announcement:
http://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/najmabadi-nehgrant.php

4. The Italian Digital Women's Library in the Context of Europe by Annamaria Tagliavini
The author describes how the focus on women's movements influenced the types of sources collected at the Italian Women's Library, as well as the Fragen Project, a collaborative project involving European women's libraries.
Link to the Italian Digital Women's Library and Fragen:
http://www.women.it/bibliotecadelledonne/index_eng.htm

5. Unveiling Women's History Online. Digitizing the Washington College of Law Historical Collection by Allison B. Zhang and Susan McElrath- The authors provide a wealth of information about the technical aspects of digitization: metadata; working with digitization vendors; developing a file naming convention. They also describe the custom viewer for scrapbooks.
Link to digital collection:
http://www.aladin.wrlc.org/gsdl/collect/wcl/wcl.shtml

6. Digitization of the French Language Sidonie de la Houssaye Papers by Gina Costello
Costello covers microfilming the collection for preservation, and subsequent digitization of the microfilm to improve access.
Link to digital collection:
http://louisdl.louislibraries.org/index.php?name=Sidonie%20de%20la%20Houssaye%20Collection

7. Chronicling African American Women Students at the University of Iowa by Shawn Averkamp
In addition to covering selection, digitization, and metadata issues, Averkamp outlines the timeline approach for providing a key entry point to the collection. Such an approach provides contextual information for small groups of items, rather than just for the collection as a whole.
Link to digital collection: http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/aaws/
Link to full text of the article:
http://www.reference-global.com/stoken/default+domain/H6SxHIXJbY9yqtsfHeMg/abs/10.1515/mfir.2009.022


8. A Few Good Women, 1969–1974. An Oral History Collection Experienced through an Online Curriculum for Grades 6–12 by Karla M. Schmit
Link to digital collection: http://www.afgw.libraries.psu.edu/index.html
This collection highlights the experiences of women in government positions during Richard Nixon's presidency. Schmit explores multiple options for making the collection relevant for students: WebQuests to compare "A Few Good Women" with women in government in other countries; compare interviews in the collection with their own interviews with women; and even play the roles of journalist Vera Glaser and President Nixon in Readers Theatre.

Review of Microfilm Collection
* Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance Archives, ca. 1972–1994 (reviewed by Phyllis Holman Weisbard)

Reviews of Commercial Digital Collections
* Manuscript Women’s Letters and Diaries from the American Antiquarian Society, 1750–1950 (reviewed by Jessica Moran)
* Perdita Manuscripts: Women Writers, 1500–1700 (reviewed by Robert Detmering)
* Women, War and Society, 1914–1918: From the Imperial War Museum, London (reviewed by Nina Clements)

Ken Middleton
Editor, Microform & Imaging Review
Box 013, Walker Library
Middle Tennessee State Univ.
Murfreesboro, TN 37132
(615) 904-8524
kmiddlet@mtsu.edu

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Free for March: Women and Social Movements

March is Women’s History month and to celebrate, we’ve made the popular online collection, Women and Social Movements in the U.S., 1600-2000, Scholar's Edition, freely accessible for the entire month.

To access Women and Social Movements, Scholar's Edition, simply visit
http://wass.alexanderstreet.com
CHOICE OAT.gif
Winner of a 2004 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award
A mainstay of women’s history scholarship and teaching in universities worldwide, this online collection is edited by Professors Kathryn Kish Sklar and Thomas Dublin of SUNY Binghamton. This extensive collection of primary historic documents, books, images, scholarly essays, teaching tools, and book and Web site reviews documents the history of women’s activism in public life, and is one of the most heavily visited resources for women’s studies and for U.S. history on the Web. Organized around document projects written by leading scholars, the collection is a powerful research and classroom tool designed to help users develop the skills needed to analyze primary documents and conduct research. Document projects are organized around interpretive questions, each with 20-50 primary documents that address the question. Some examples are:
  • How Did the Ladies Association of Philadelphia Shape New Forms of Women's Activism During the American Revolution, 1780-1781?
  • How Did White Women Aid Former Slaves During and After the Civil War, 1863-1891?
  • How Did Black and White Southern Women Campaign to End Lynching, 1890-1942?
  • How and Why Did the Guerrilla Girls Alter the Art Establishment in New York City, 1985-1995?
  • How Have Recent Social Movements Shaped Civil Rights Legislation for Women? The 1994 Violence Against Women Act.
The Scholar's Edition also includes more than 40,000 pages of full-text sources, including:
  • Proceedings of all women's rights conventions, 1848-1869
  • Proceedings of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 1874-1898
  • Selected publications of the League of Women Voters, 1920-2000
Also newly added to the Scholar's Edition are:
New content is added semi-annually.
Please also be sure to check out the companion blog to Women and Social Movements, Women and Social Movements: The Online Discussion, where faculty discuss how they’ve made use of the online collection in the classroom, share syllabi, and exchange ideas.